Rudy Giuliani Calls Syria ‘The Most Bungled’ And ‘Most Mishandled’ Foreign Policy In The Modern Age. What About Iraq Mr. 9/11?

How on earth did Rudy Giuliani get to be an expert on Syria? His greatest claim to fame is that he happened to be mayor of New York during the 9/11 attacks. And while my New York City Democratic friends assure me Giuliani did do a great job in the aftermath, that hardly qualifies him as an expert on Syria or anything else regarding foreign policy. And he pretty much proved that by “forgetting” George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq and calling President Obama’s Syria policy “the most bungled” and “most mishandled” foreign policy in the history of the modern age. Seriously.

In words that could have been uttered by so many other Fox pundits, Giuliani said Putin “is now the one that’s leading,” on Syria, that it’s Obama’s fault for “leading by following,” that “we’ve completely lost control” of the “useless negotiation” over Syria’s chemical weapons.

To her credit, host Greta Van Susteren steered the conversation away by asking, “How do you fix it? How do you get us out of this?”

Giuliani didn’t have any great ideas, of course. He said, “There isn’t a good option, there’s a totally unacceptable option (meaning Obama’s plan for “an extremely small” strike). Then Giuliani said:

This has to be, probably, the most bungled, the most mishandled area of foreign policy - I don’t know if it’s in the history of our country but certainly in the modern age.

Really? I would have thought that avoiding war is far preferable to starting one under false pretenses and with rosy assurances that we’d be out within six months.

Later, Giuliani said, “Iran is creating a Shiite axis, right in that area in the Middle East, that includes, obviously, Iran, Iraq – where they have total over Malaki, who’s slaughtering people in Iraq - and now Syria.

It's funny how you rarely, if ever, hear about that on "fair and balanced" Fox News.

I guess I shouldn’t gripe too much about Giuliani’s phony cred on Middle East policy. He’s certainly an expert compared to Donald Trump, whose later comments on the subject were teased during this segment.

From Jane S’s comment:
“I’m certainly happy to give this new way of approaching the rest of the world a chance, since the other way wasn’t working out so well.”

Dear Jane S: So am I — and I’m sure the OVERWHELMINGMAJORITY of the families who lost loved ones (or who have loved ones who were crippled and maimed) in that TOTALDEBACLE in Iraq will agree with you as well.

A friend of mine works for FEMA and was in NYC a couple days after 9/11, and what this friend has to say about the way Rudy handled the aftermath would curl your hair. The man is a flat-out genius at taking credit for other people’s efforts and at blocking anybody else from visibility, even if it means screwing his own city residents in need from getting access to help from somebody other than his agencies. I have nothing but contempt for him.

Jack Coglin— I agree with you. I am very far from the biggest Obama fan in the world, but the fact that he’s completely comfortable letting Putin bluster and make a jerk of himself in the TImes and stand back and let Kerry work out some deal to get Assad’s poison gas bottled up with Putin’s help anyway, is something I find pretty impressive. How nice to have a president who doesn’t need to beat his chest and posture to show he’s a macho man.

Whether Obama’s telegraphing of his uncertainties is a good thing overall in the long run, we’ll find out. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe a lot of other people in the world, Mideast leaders and the like, have the same idiotic macho attitudes as the McCains and Giulianis, etc., and genuinely see Obama, and thus the U.S., as weak because he isn’t strutting around the way they do, I have no way to know. But I have to concede that that’s realistically a possibility.

We’ll find out. I’m certainly happy to give this new way of approaching the rest of the world a chance, since the other way wasn’t working out so well.